‘You North Islanders are learning a thing or two down here at last. We’re between Nelson and Blenheim, and one or other of those has the sunshine record every year.’
‘You can get too hot, you know,’ said Eddie Simm, who was from Wanganui, but he was laughed down by mainlanders, and his fellow North Islanders in the group gave only half-hearted support, for, as well as being out of their territory, they were sick somehow, weren’t they, and so old loyalties were weakened.
It wasn’t a simple, firm shoreline to walk. The rushes and sea grasses hid slight undulations where the mud lay deeply, and every now and then miniature inlets pushed back towards the road. Some of the group picked their way fastidiously from vantage to vantage, others went as the crow flies, but plopping and stumping through whatever happened to be underfoot. Dermot Sweeney found the body of a large cod: much of its tail and fins had either been eaten or rotted away, but its eyes were quaking and reproachful. There were also several loops of nylon string, faded to a coral blue. Tolly and Wilfe strung some together, tied it to driftwood sticks and went whipping as if they were ten years old again.
‘You flick me with that, and I’ll thump you,’ said Raf.
‘Just a little tune-up to get you trotting,’ said Tolly.
‘Get out of it, you dozy prick.’
‘Mush, mush,’ said Wilfe, and he cast the nylon so that it lightly rapped Mrs McIlwraith’s prim back.
‘I shall give you just this one warning,’ she said.
‘Why is it,’ said Raf, ‘that any change of routine sets off some people to play silly buggers?’
At the point it was stony and without mud. Wilfe, Gaynor and Dilys, who arrived first, stood gazing across the sound as if the few hundred metres they had covered opened up quite a new vista of the bushed hills on the other side, or a sky of different colour above them. The others came up and added to the scrutiny for a while, and only when all the twelve had made the full trek was it considered fitting that they turn round and walk back the same nondescript way to the vans. Wilfe was mastering the use of his nylon and driftwood whip and he darted the cord out at almost everything he passed. Tolly had lost interest in his, and let it fall among the rocks of the point.
When they were back at Pan Bay no one bothered to say how much fun it had been. Montgomery had begun building up a rock surround for the barbecue fire, and put aside all evidence of cannabis except increased good humour and the smell on his breath. ‘He’s caught bloody zilch, of course,’ he said mildly of Jock McPhie. Jock had his back to them and, out of earshot, fished on.
‘Now for the barbecue,’ said Raf. The Takahes gathered to him reluctantly, as there was no other messiah at Pan Bay that quiet, hot day. ‘A barbecue’s delightfully appropriate for us, because, like Harlequin, it’s total atavism, you see.’ Raf said that quietly, and glanced about to check that those close to him wouldn’t be offended by what he intended. ‘Through civilisation we pushed on until we had jugs which filled themselves and never boiled dry, fan ovens and microwaves, blenders and beaters, and now we ignore it and go out and stand up-wind to char meat and wrap it in bread to eat.’
Abbey and Tolly saw the darkly funny side of it with Raf; appreciated the parallel of eating habits with primal brain regression. What a sign of trust and tacit friendship their reaction was, though, accepting he should joke about a fatal illness and be free of it himself. Tolly continued to laugh and smile as he laid the sausages and chops on the heavy, black tray that he and David had set up over the fire.
‘Who knows,’ he said, ‘maybe it’s a therapy worth trying, to fight fire with fire. Come and dance around the barbecue, Abbey, and we’ll make the vans like bongo drums and beat on them with sticks.’
‘You just want to see my legs.’
‘A glimpse of heaven,’ said Tolly, gallantry put ahead of truth.
The sun was still bright, but heat shimmered away from the fire between them in strange, colourless whorls. Tolly and Gaynor across from David were distorted so that their outlines broke and shook, their faces convulsed in a fleeting mirage of expressions completely alien to them. Even as they mocked Harlequin, maybe he was moving almost invisibly among them.
‘Jock, Jock,’ Tolly called, ‘we’re keeping a place on the barbecue for the fish. Where is it?’ But there was no real malice: they all admitted, to themselves at least, that they had no more success with their various salvations than Jock with his fish. Jock dismembered and put away his rod, and came and joined the others by the barbecue. He was one of the most prickly of Takahe’s inmates, a successor to Howard Peat in his wounded pride, which kept him a bit apart. ‘What chance of catching fish with the noise you ones are making?’ he said with his fierce smile.
The novelty of the day, and the exercise, gave them more than usual appetite. The pallid sausages, the candy red and white chops, heaped in the chilly bin, were soon burnt and eaten. Tolly brought in the sack of Speights cans to a great reception. Even Mrs McIlwraith took one gingerly, though she was accustomed to chardonnay, and put can to mouth only when she realised no cup at all was available.
Raf had borrowed a half-size piano accordion for Abbey to play, and he brought the custom-made black and yellow carry bag from his van. Abbey cleaned her hands carefully of sauce and fat before beginning to perform. It wasn’t Ahab and Pod, or any of the latest stuff, it wasn’t even the Big O’s ‘Pretty Woman’, or U2 still not having found what they were looking for, but they could have Phantom of the Opera; they could have Celtic ballads, couldn’t they. Old familiar faces.
There was hardly any traffic on the road behind them. No one stopped, though Bryce gave a toot and a wave. Maybe it would have been more appropriate at dusk around the campfire. As it was, the sun still had a good deal of heat at seven in the evening, and they were clustered there singing to Abbey’s accompaniment. In the end there was an audience of sorts: three children hanging on the pipe and netting gate across the road where the trailer sign advertised mushrooms and walnuts. Two prepubescent spindly girls and a younger boy, with legs twining like creeper around the pipes. They were too far away to be spoken to, but their body language was of embarrassment, whether for themselves, or the Mahakipawa guests, who knew.
Once they’d done the singing, most felt the picnic must be almost over. The tide was coming in again, but the channels were still obvious — mud free and the best places for a swim. Montgomery, Tolly, Gaynor and several others wanted a last quick dip, and David went out with them. By keeping to the nearest channel, only ankle deep at first, they were able to move quickly through the mudflats and wade well out into the sound. There was a noticeable breeze out from the shore and it paid to swim with it at your back so that the chop wasn’t blown into your face. Montgomery, normally no model of preparedness, had swimming goggles which made him look like a First World War participant — a dispatch rider perhaps, or the pilot of a Sopwith Camel?
Only after admiring Montgomery’s purposeful, awkward overarm for some time, did David realise that he had no intention of husbanding any strength to return. Had Montgomery been a better swimmer, he might have achieved release on his own terms, but Gaynor was a strong swimmer, and Tolly and David rather better than Montgomery. Gaynor overhauled him, kept him partly restrained, partly supported. When David caught up he endeavoured to change Montgomery’s priorities by grabbing his hair. It wasn’t a time for subtlety, even when dealing with a man whose wife had left him the week before. Montgomery’s eyes couldn’t be read behind the flat, misted glass of his blue goggles. They all swam back together and, when the bottom was underfoot again, David told his charge that those on the shore need never know, but both were aware that the pantomime had been clear even at that distance. Nothing was said of it, though, as they dried and changed. Although they were in the real and mundane world of Pan Bay, they were also in the world of Harlequin, which has allowances, deceits and conventions all its own, where suicide is no more disparaged than any other touted cure.
‘Now, Monty,�
� Tolly whispered to him as they pulled on their underpants, ‘how could we let you go? There’d have been only thirteen green bottles left and that’s very unlucky.’
‘I was in the frame of mind for it, that’s all,’ said Montgomery. ‘Nothing personal at all. No reproach upon the company, or the day.’ The weed, the circumstances, his wounded pride, necessitated some formality.
In other circumstances David might have been willing for him to have his wish: to decide on the direction of his own life, but at the Pan Bay picnic the responsibility of supervision was too direct. A loss of a patient would almost certainly have meant no more outings, and the assumption of dereliction of duty. His generous but illegal provision of the shit might have come out. ‘No bloody gratitude at all,’ said Raf.
Still under mute scrutiny from the children at the fence, they prepared to abandon Pan Bay. The special genesis of the group made it partly dysfunctional, as the professionals say, but it had some dynamics nevertheless. Who travelled in which van, for instance. Who preferred Raf and who preferred David. Who wanted a front seat, and who wanted to be first away. Who wanted to travel with a friend, and who wanted to avoid Jock’s disdain. Who wanted to sing, and who wanted to be quiet all the way home. Who didn’t really give a damn, but made a vehement statement anyway, just to assert a presence.
Montgomery was compelled to return from the picnic he had hoped would be his last. As David drove back up the slope to the centre, he felt an ache that came from the intractable isolation of existence. There was a glimpse of Montgomery’s sad and distant face. There was a limit to what anyone could do for him. That was the truth of it. Maybe David should have been less selfish: let the goggle man go for it across the sound.
After sentencing, David was allowed some time for family and friends, A fair bit of time, in fact: maybe the police had other customers they had to wait for in the courts, but their goodwill could as easily have been the reason. Jocelyn, the married woman who was his lover, and his mother, both came to see him, neither showing the slightest response to the other as they passed at the entrance to the holding cells. A mother may well be expected to stick by her son, however clear the disappointment in her eyes, but Jocelyn’s presence was something else. For the first time David felt an admiration for her unconnected with physical response: the way her nipples fluted when she was aroused, or the flexing muscles of her back. You dirty bastard, she would say, in a voice so low, indulgent, so utterly familiar in tone that it put inches on him just to hear. A pact of passion in mutual and open convenience was what they had. No strings whatsoever. No future plans. No interest in the circle of each other’s lives, except for that one place where circumferences met and fused as their bodies fused in strenuous relaxation. There was still no future sought or required, but how much had she placed at risk by coming to open court, by asking to see him? Just to say goodbye. What strength and directness a woman can have. All to say goodbye.
‘It was a blast while it lasted, wasn’t it?’ David asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said.
‘Prison’s not such a big deal, really,’ he said.
‘I suppose not, but don’t let it make you hate yourself. Start off your life again just the same. You’re no worse than anybody else.’
You’re no worse than anybody else? Surely at that time in his life it had been true.
They knew they wouldn’t see each other again, unless it was by accident. In one sense it was a convenient closure, instead of Jocelyn ditching him, or her husband finding out. What David remembered best that last time they met, was the first time they met — on the observation terrace of the restaurant reached by gondola. She was relaxed against the railing as her companion talked, and her long, bare arms were crossed far down at the wrist, and she knew that he was watching her, but showed neither unease, nor coquetry. She was tall, with a figure better than her face, and when she raised a hand to push her hair from her forehead, the evident muscles moved beneath the smooth skin of her long forearm.
‘I want to thank you for coming,’ he told her in the holding cell, aware of how little the banality of his expression could bear the freight of his feeling. ‘Jesus, you’re the last person with any obligation towards me.’
‘Fuck a life which is all obligation,’ she said. He thought then, briefly, that she was a woman he might have loved in other circumstances.
When David later saw the prisons of television drama, he had very little sense of affinity, or recognition. Those places were given fierce, dramatic undercurrents; aspects of terrible focus which drove lives along. Maybe Paparua lacked sufficient incorrigible, dynamic personalities, for poverty was his main impression: you have a poor life, and the life of the poor, in prison. Food, clothing and shelter sure enough, but they’re all poorly presented, and your options are restricted. The environment is poor, the outlook is poor, the opinion others have of you and that you have of yourself impoverished. The staff are a reluctant part of the diminished life and seek to escape it. Everything is worn and communal, down at heel, and kept going at a minimum level.
There were few grand desperadoes in Paparua, no intricate baronial hierarchy that David was aware of: just a ghetto of opportunities neglected, mediocrity, failure and self-deceit. The shame of failure was stronger than any remorse. In prison what you despise in your fellows hasn’t anything to do with criminality: it’s their failure that catches in your nostrils.
Prison wasn’t particularly dangerous, or violent — not for someone in for the run-of-the-mill crime of drugs — and David wasn’t baby-faced enough to be bothered by more than the routine approaches for sex. Things did happen, of course, like the Auckland guy in the east wing convicted for snuff movies who was found with a broken neck. Yet oddly, it was like hearing of murder in a different part of the city. The thing was to keep your head down. The thing was to look out for number one, and not draw vindictiveness upon yourself.
In some ways prison was like a single men’s hostel for unskilled workers, or a drop-in centre for those misfits spun out of the competitive centre of society. David became a regular watcher of a great many ongoing television programmes, and the many hours at table tennis put him in the prison team which played and beat Christchurch club sides. A sense of futility, a scathing awareness of days wasted, was a common mood for him, but you didn’t talk about anything like that.
And, having been incarcerated for dealing, he was surprised to find shit quite readily available within the prison, but you didn’t talk about that to anyone on the outside either.
David had no pet cockroach, or window bar that worked as a sundial. He began a correspondence course of business and financial skills. After years of the humanities he’d ended in prison, so he settled for practical subjects, but didn’t stick to them, despite coming across ideas that would have improved his success in the cannabis business. He became more interested in programmes run inside, which meant, in effect, by Mike Wiremu, a recreational officer and counsellor.
‘We haven’t got many graduates here,’ Wiremu told him. ‘Most of the guys were dick happy, or into booze and shit during their formative years, you might say.’ Wiremu’s square bulk filled one end of the small office; opposite was the door and a chair on which David sat. One longer wall had a particle-board desk with file boxes and above it a large year planner. The other had a slightly recessed window with a view of the boiler house obscured by slashes of birdshit and the hachuring of a security grille. Four colours had been initially used on the planner but, as the year had progressed, so the writing dwindled and the colour fell away. ‘I could use you if you like,’ said Wiremu. He had no file in front of him: he seemed uninterested in David’s crime, or sentence. It was as if he were asking a fellow bridge player to serve on the grading committee, or a working bee to enlarge the bar. One of the cardboard file boxes was labelled in felt pen as — ‘Fitness and Hygiene Yak Sheets’. ‘There’s no money in it, of course, but it passes the time, gives you some minor privileges and looks good on the old p
arole report, eh.’ Wiremu, like many of his race, was egalitarian by disposition. Superintendent Somerville, Pye the wife beater, the pigman who came on Tuesdays and Fridays, all received the same soft-voiced, slightly self-deprecating attention. ‘As a matter of fact, I never finished a degree myself, but then I married early.’ His face was large and flat, with a mouth that went right across it and out of sight around the corners.
The boiler-house wall was used by kitchen staff for improvised fives. David could see two of them playing with a yellow tennis ball in their break. They were free men, but their slouching, leaping uncouthness was exactly that of the prisoners they served. Maybe they’d been on the chow line too long, and something had snaked back to them. Maybe it was the place itself that determined attitudes, rather than being criminals, or free men, within it.
‘You could work out some personal programmes for younger guys,’ suggested Wiremu. ‘That way we could match them up with volunteers that come willing to help. Okay, most of them will tell you to get knotted, but that’s the normal odds here. You know that pale guy without teeth who’s come into your wing? He can’t even spell his name.’
‘What is his name?’
‘Poniatowski,’ said Wiremu, the expanse of his brown face just the same. That’s when David began to like him. That’s when he decided to develop programmes with him.
Paparua Prison was progressive enough to have general counselling sessions. For some inmates it was a directed part of their sentence, and a few others came out of boredom, the hope of disclosure, or to score parole points. Wiremu did the organising, and a psychologist called Garvan ran the sessions. He was known inside as Mad Max, because of a professional calm that had become almost total unresponsiveness.
‘My old man came home for Christmases and christenings,’ Houghton said, ‘and one led to the other. All of us kids were born in August or September.’ It was one of Mad Max’s sessions — on fathers. David wouldn’t have come had he known the topic beforehand. He didn’t want to talk about his family in front of any of those people; didn’t want even Wiremu to know anything about his father. ‘He was a top mechanic on one of the Formula One teams,’ went on Houghton, who was in for burning down a cough syrup factory after he was sacked. ‘No, not McLaren, but he sent back birthday stuff from all over the world. The right number of presents for the number of September kids, but he never tried to sort them out by age, or enclosed any cards. I can’t remember ever having a talk with him alone, he was so much on the go. Once I got a flat ceramic house from Holland to hang on the wall — one time a green and red felt bird from Mexico with a button for an arse. I was fifteen at the time.’
Harlequin Rex Page 16